Self-exiled Baloch leader urges Bangladesh to support Balochistan

Dhaka: A self-exiled Baloch leader has sought the Bangladesh government's support in the effort to liberate Balochistan from what he termed "Pakistan's occupation", a media report said on Thursday.

"They (Pakistan) are committing the same atrocities that they had committed with you," Mir Suleman Dawood Jan Ahmedzai told BD News in Dhaka on Wednesday, referring to Bangladesh's 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.

Ahmedzai has been staying in Britain since 2007 to gather international support for their cause of an independent Balochistan.

He was in Dhaka to take part in a seminar organised by the Centre for Genocide Studies at the Dhaka University.

Ahmedzai said "Pakistan occupied his country" in March 1948 and since then has been carrying out atrocities to suppress public uprisings.

The Balochistan issue returned to the spotlight in the region after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech pointed at human rights violations in the province.

Ahmedzai said they were expecting "cooperation and diplomatic understanding of the situation they are going through" from Bangladesh so that Dhaka can take it up to the UN.